Joach didn’t have an answer. He pointed to the door to his room. “In here.”
She spied the window at the end of the hall and shook free of Joach. “I didn’t see what happened. I need to see.” She stumbled toward the window.
“Don’t!”
Elena ignored her brother’s urgent whisper. She reached the hall’s end. The thick-paned window did not open but had a wide view of the farmyard below. She leaned her forehead against the cold glass. Below, only steps from the rear door, lit by the flames, she saw what was left of her mother and father. Smoke billowed across in waves.
Two sets of scorched bones, entwined in each other’s arms, lay on the brown dirt, skulls touching each other. The old man stood a few paces away. The fringe of his robe smoldered. He had an arm raised, pointing toward the front of the house.
Joach stepped behind her and pulled her from the window. “You’ve seen enough, Elena. The fire spreads. We need to hurry.”
“But . . . Mother and Father . . .” She looked toward the window.
“We’ll mourn for them later.” Joach helped her to his bedroom. He pulled open his door. “Tonight we need to survive.” His next words were ice. “Tomorrow is soon enough for revenge.”
“What are we going to do, Joach?” she said as she entered his room.
“Escape.” In the shadowed room, she could still see the firm set to his jaws. How could her brother remain so hard? A few tears had escaped him, nothing else. “We need warmer clothes. Grab my wool overcoat.” Her brother slipped into his pants and a thick sweater her mother had knitted him for last Winter’s Eve. She remembered that holiday night, and fresh tears began to flow. “Now,” Joach said.
She grabbed his long coat off the hook in his closet and pulled into the thick warmth. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until the warmth of the jacket embraced her.
Her brother stood by his bedroom window. “El, how’s your balance?”
“I’m doing better. Why?”
He waved her to the window. The view looked out on the side of the house. A huge chestnut tree spread its thick branches far and wide, tickling both the eaves of the house and the roof of the horse barn. Her brother pushed the window wide. “Do as I do,” he said, as he climbed onto the sill.
He leaped out, caught a thick branch in his hands, and swung up onto a thicker limb. He had obviously done this before. He twisted around and waved her forward.
She climbed onto the narrow sill. Her bare toes clung to the wood. She looked down at the dirt far below. If she should fall, a broken bone was the least of her worries. It was what lay under the dirt that made her teeter on the sill.
Her brother whistled like a warbler, drawing her attention back to him. She leaped out the window and caught the same branch he had. Joach helped pull her onto the thick bough beside him.
“Follow me!” Joach said, his words low, fearful of drawing the others’ attention. She heard voices from the front of the house, followed by a crash of glass. She followed him through the limbs of the tree, ignoring the tinier branches that snatched at clothes and flesh.
Through the branches of the tree, they crossed the treacherous yard. As they reached the smaller branches, the limbs began to bend under their weight. Joach pointed to the open door of the barn’s hayloft. “Like this.” He ran down a thin branch and jumped across the empty space. He landed with a roll on a tufted pile of hay. Instantly on his feet, he was at the door again. “Hurry!” he hissed toward her.
She took a deep breath and ran. She must do this! And she might have succeeded if a branch hadn’t snagged a pocket as she leaped. The coat ripped, spinning her in midair. She flailed as she flew and could not suppress a scream. Still yelling, she collided with the barn just below the door to the loft.
Before she could fall, Joach had a handful of the overcoat’s collar in his grip. She hung in the coat from his arm. “I can’t pull you up,” he said, straining. “Reach up and grab the edge! Hurry! They’re sure to have heard you!”
With her heart clamoring in her ears, she struggled to grasp the edge of the hayloft opening. Only her fingertips reached the wooden lip. But it was enough. With her fingertips pulling and Joach yanking on the coat, they managed to haul her into the loft.
Both winded and gasping for air, they pushed through the hay to the ladder leading down.
Elena paused at the top rung and pointed to the dirt floor of the barn. “What if the worms are down there, too?”
Joach pointed to the stallion and the mare in their stalls. “Look at Tracker and Mist.” The two horses, agitated from the commotion, eyes white and rolling with fear, were still alive. “C’mon.” Her brother led the way, scrambling down the ladder.
Elena followed, piercing her right hand with a thick splinter as she slid down. She picked the piece of wood from her palm, noticing that the ruby stain had faded to a slight pink, almost the same color as her other hand.
Joach had already thrown the stall doors wide, and the two horses snorted warily as they stepped out, upset at the smoke. Her brother tossed her a set of reins and a bit. She ran a fast hand down Mist’s neck, calming her, and slipped the bit and reins in place. They didn’t have time for saddles.
Joach leaped atop Tracker and sidled over to help pull her onto Mist’s bare back. Once seated, he crossed to the door at the rear of the barn and used his toe to kick loose the latch. The doors swung open, facing the edge of the orchard. Joach held a door wide to allow Mist passage.
As Elena guided Mist outside, she scanned the dark space between the barn and the trees. Clouds had masked the moon, and the air was thick with smoke. Just as she was turning Mist toward the trees, light bloomed from behind Joach. Elena swung in her seat and gasped. Behind her brother, at the corner of the barn, the cowled man stepped into the rear space. His partner held a lantern high.
“Elena, go!” Joach swung his horse to face the two men. “I’ll hold them off.”
Elena ignored him and watched the old man raise his crooked staff and strike the packed dirt. With this sharp impact, the ground swelled around the two men and spread in a wave, like a pebble dropped in a pond. The wave of churning soil raced toward Joach. Momentary glimpses of thick white bodies roiled in the dirt. “No! Joach, run!”
Joach saw what sped toward him. He yanked on Tracker’s reins, twisting the horse’s neck around. Tracker whinnied in panic, fighting for a moment, then danced in a circle and began to leap away from the pursuers. But the horse moved too slowly. The advancing edge of the corrupt wave swallowed the mount’s hind legs.
Elena watched as the rear of the horse sank into the soil as if into mire. The mud turned black with blood. Tracker reared up and screamed in pain, his eyes bulging. Joach held tight to the reins. The horse crashed to the ground. The hooves of his forelimbs dug deep into the packed dirt, trying to drag his rear limbs out.
Joach urged the horse on, but Elena knew it was futile. The predators in the soil could rend flesh from bone in mere heartbeats. Elena raced her steed toward the struggling pair. She pulled up fast in front of Tracker. With an arm wrapped in the reins, Elena had to fight to keep Mist in place before the panting, wild-eyed stallion. “To me!” she screamed to her brother.
Joach recognized the futility of his position. “Leave me! Go!”
“Not without you!” Mist skittered back a step. The wave, momentarily delayed by the meal of the horse, now rolled toward her. Tracker’s forelimbs became trapped in the churning soil. “Jump!” she yelled to her brother.
Joach clenched his fists on the reins, frozen in indecision. Then, with a shake of his head, he fought to his feet on the bucking horse. Cartwheeling his arms for balance, he leaped from Tracker’s back and landed hard on his belly across Mist’s rump. His sudden weight set fire to the horse’s legs. Mist leaped away as if struck by a whip.
Elena let Mist run, only guiding her enough to point her toward the dark orchards. Elena was busy with her other arm, trying to keep her brother on horseback.
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The three plunged into the grove of apple trees.
6
THE JUGGLER, BARE chested, wearing only his baggy traveling trousers, stepped to the edge of the stage and set down his pan. Each town was the same, one blurring into the next, the same vague faces staring up from the audience. He had been on the road now for eight years, alone, with only his memories for company. And still those memories crowded him too closely.
A few in the audience mumbled and pointed fingers toward him. He backed a safe distance from the edge. He knew the fingers pointed to his right shoulder, where his arm should have been.
The juggler tossed his four knives in the air, slicing the pipe smoke of the room into thin ribbons. He watched the first tumble back toward his left hand and, with practiced indifference, snatched the hilt and returned the knife aloft with a flick of the wrist. He sent the remainder chasing after the first. The spinning blades caught the flame of the torches and blazed back to the audience clustered up to the inn’s rickety stage.
Appreciative ooh’s and ahh’s echoed thinly from some in the audience, but most of their attention was on the quality of the ale being proffered by the inn and the promptness of the service. With one eye on his knives, the juggler watched a harried barmaid wallowing through the crowd, a platter laden with sloshing glasses balanced about her head. She wore the plastered smile of the overworked.
He nodded briefly to acknowledge the clink of a coin in the pan at the foot of the stage. It’s how one earned a living on the road.
“Hey, buddy!” someone yelled from the stage’s apron, his voice slurred with a generous lubrication of ale. “Careful there with those fancy pig pokers, or you might lose your other arm.”
Someone else cackled from near the back of the room and answered the drunken man. “Careful there yourself, Bryn. You’re standing awful close to those whirling knives. He might just clip off that ugly woolyworm under your nose you call a mustache.”
The audience roared at the jibe.
The insulted man—who was balding and had a thick, curled and waxed mustache—pounded a footboard of the stage. “Oh, yeah? Well, Strefen, at least I’m man enough to grow one.”
This was not a good sign. Not that the juggler expected this altercation to worsen into anything more than an exchange of insults. But when the audience found more entertainment among the tables than on the stage, he would catch few coins in his pan. He needed to gain their attention. These days, even a one-armed juggler sometimes warranted no more than passing interest.
He let a knife fall to the floor, feigning loss of control. The blade struck into the wooden stage with a thunk and sank deep into the board. This caught the audience’s eyes. Nothing like failure that could be ridiculed to draw attention to oneself. He heard the beginning of derisive laughter bubbling from the crowd. Then each knife, one at a time, supposedly toppling uncontrolled, landed its blade tip into the hilt of the one below it—thunk, thunk, thunk—ending up with all four knives stacked in a row on top of each other.
The tower of knives waved slightly back and forth in front of the stunned guests of the inn. A smattering of claps spread into a moderately enthusiastic applause. The tinkle of a few coins in his pan accompanied the acknowledgment.
Each copper bit, which could otherwise be spent on ale, was hard won. If he wanted to purchase dinner tonight, he still needed more of a take. He seldom earned enough to put a roof over his head in the evening, but he was used to sleeping under his horse.
He swung to the side of the stage and opened his satchel. He retrieved his next trick—a set of oiled torches. He grabbed the three in his fist and lit them from a flaming brand in a brazier. They flared to life. The audience responded with a hush when each torch burned a different color—a deep green, a sapphire blue, and a red deeper than ordinary flame. He had learned this trick, which used an alchemy of special powders, during his years in the Southlands.
A few claps erupted behind him.
He turned to face the audience with the torches raised high and flung them upward, almost to the rafters of the inn’s common room. As they cascaded down, showering a trail of light, he caught them up and returned them toward the roof.
The applause was now vigorous, but his ear still only heard a few coins tapping into his pan. So he sent the torches even higher, his biceps bulging with the effort until his body shone under a thin oil of sweat. A few women ooh’ed to the left of the stage, but he noticed from the corner of his eye that they were staring at his physique and not the cascading torches. He had learned that there were other ways to earn a living on the road, and he was not above showing his wares.
As he worked the torches, he flexed his shoulders, displaying his wide chest and ample musculature. Black haired and gray eyed, with the ruddy complexion of the plainsmen of his home, he had been known to juggle more than knives and torches to earn a room and a bed.
More coins were flipped into his cache.
With a final flourish, he bowed with all three torches still aloft. The audience gasped, as usual, as the torches tumbled toward his bowed back. He noticed one of his buxom admirers raise a concerned hand to her mouth. Just as the torches were about to hit, he performed a standing flip and caught each torch one at a time, sailing the torches into a waiting bucket of water. Each sizzle of vanquished flame accelerated the clapping. When he was done, the audience was on its feet clapping and thumping tabletops with mugs.
He noticed his pan was still filling with coins. He kept bowing until the audience calmed and the coins stopped flowing. With a final wave, he collected his knives and pan and leaped from the stage. The crowd still murmured appreciatively, and a few patrons patted his back as he moved through them. He pulled on his leather jerkin, still too heated from his performance for the thick cotton undershirt he normally wore.
By eyeballing the pile of coins, he knew he would eat well tonight, and with luck, he might just have enough left over to pay for a room at the inn, if not, he spotted a few ladies who still had an eye fixed on his bare chest. There were other options.
The innkeeper slid his fat belly down the bar toward him, his chubby face pinked by the heat of the room to the color of a pig’s rump. He wore the wine-stained smock that seemed the usual attire for the owner of an inn of this quality. Pushing back the four hairs that still adorned his head, he swung his wide nose to the juggler and plopped his thick paw on the scarred wood of the bar. “Where’s my cut?” he said in a wheeze.
The juggler counted out the proper percentage of coins to pay for his use of the stage. The innkeeper’s eyes watched each copper descend into his meaty palm: The juggler expected him to begin licking his lips at any moment, the lust was so evident in the keeper’s eyes.
“That’s all?” he said, shaking the fistful of coins. “I saw those coins filling your pan. You’re holding out on me.”
“I assure you, your percentage has been met.” The juggler stared the innkeeper square in the eye.
The innkeeper backed down with a grumble and swatted a barmaid out of his way as he returned to his post farther down the bar. Another barmaid, a comely lass with thick blond hair in braids, slipped a glass of ale in front of him while the innkeeper had his back turned. “Enjoy,” she whispered to him with a slight smile and lowering of lash. “Something to cool the fire in you until later.” She continued to the next customer with only the briefest glance back at him.
No, his horse would definitely be sleeping alone tonight.
He collected his glass of cold ale and twisted around to lean on the bar and watch the next performer mount the stage. This was a tight crowd, and after his performance, he pitied the young boy he saw climbing the steps to the stage.
Not boy, he realized once he saw the performer straighten from placing a pan by the apron of the stage. She was small, and the gray trousers and plain white shift she wore did little to highlight her feminine attributes, the few that there were. At first he thought her barely past her first bleed, a sapling of a woman,
but once she sat on the stool and faced the crowd, he knew he was wrong. Her face, young with a buttered complexion and a rosebud for lips, belied the look in her violet eyes: a sadness and grace that could only come from the passage of many hard years.
The crowd, of course, ignored her as she slipped a lute from a cloth case. The tables grew raucous below her with the din of wine orders, friends carousing, the clink of glasses, the occasional guffaw. Pipe and torch smoke thickened the air. She seemed a petal amidst a raging storm.
The juggler sighed. This was not going to be a pleasant sight. He had seen other performers pelted from the stage with soiled napkins and the crusts of bread.
But the small woman positioned the lute against her belly, leaning over the instrument like a mother with a child. The wood of the lute was thickly lacquered, almost appearing wet in the sheen of the torches. It was the reddest wood he had ever seen, almost black, and the grain of the wood whirled in tiny pools upon its surface. This was an expensive instrument to be carting through the backwoods.
The crowd still ignored her. He heard an argument break out concerning who would win the cider contest at the local fair next month. Fists flew and a nose was broken before the combatants were pulled apart—all over cider. Well, he supposed that during his travels he’d witnessed other ridiculous fights that had ended worse than a split lip and a bloodied, battered nose.
He sipped from his ale, letting it slide down his throat. He allowed his eyes to close halfway just as the woman on the stage strummed her first chord. The music, for some reason, seemed to cut right through the chatter and settle in his ear like a nesting bird. She repeated the chord, and the crowd began to settle, the voice of the lute drawing eyes back to the stage.
He widened his own eyes. The bardswoman looked out, not to the crowd but farther, somewhere other than here. He watched her shift her fingers slightly on the neck of the instrument and saw the nails of her other hand strum down the strings. The new chord was a sister of the first. It echoed across the room as if searching for those first notes. The crowd settled to a silence, afraid to disturb this quest.